The fight over gay marriage to continue after Supreme Court decision

As the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday allowed gay marriages to resume in California, advocates and opponents of gay marriage prepared for a broader fight over same-sex unions.

Gay marriage opponents said the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions on Wednesday on the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 will likely light a fire under conservative grass-root activists. Conservatives will fight the battle at the state level, focusing their efforts on preventing the legalization of gay marriage in states that don't recognize same-sex unions.

Advocates for same-sex marriage said they will look to challenge same-sex marriage bans in 37 states and continue to fight for rights beyond marriage equality.

"There is work left to do in many state legislatures to protect against employment discrimination and protect children against bullying and expand the rights for same sex couples to marry in other states," said Jennifer Pizer, law and policy project director for LAMBDA's Western Regional Office in Los Angeles. LAMBDA is a nonprofit gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender advocacy group.

The group filed a friend of the court brief in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court in support of the plaintiffs, a gay couple, in the Proposition 8 case.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Wednesday that the sponsors of the California gay marriage ban lacked authority to defend Proposition 8 in court, thus opening the way for the 9th Circuit to lift a stay and allow the marriages. The high court also ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages legalized by the states, is unconstitutional.

Opponents of gay marriage didn't waste too much time licking their wounds after the rulings that handed religious and political conservatives a damaging blow Wednesday.

Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian advocacy group, called the ruling "disappointing" and criticized the Supreme Court, adding that the justices "neglected to uphold the will of the people through their elected representatives in Congress and the public votes of more than seven million California citizens."

Daly said the court decision wasn't a sweeping victory for liberals.

"The big picture is more of what the court did not do: It did not create a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage as it did for abortion in 1973; it also did not declare same-sex marriage a civil right on the order of ethnicity or nationality," Daly said.

The leader of one of the nation's most prominent conservative Christian groups didn't call for an overt coordinated national push-back against gay marriage, but did remind conservatives that the vast majority of states still don't have gay marriage.

Focus on the Family said any efforts to oppose gay marriage in those states will be led by Citizen Link, local Focus on the Family affiliates scattered across the country that organize around public policy issues.

National conservative political leaders were surprisingly silent on the rulings. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, declined to comment, while House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was measured in his response.

Social issues like gay marriage rarely rile up Tea Party groups, but the Supreme Court decision on Proposition 8 may be the exception.

"The Supreme Court decision on gay marriage is another example of government going wild and ceasing to reflect the values of the people government represents," said Michael Alexander, founder of Pasadena TeaPAC, which is part of the larger Tea Party movement.

The ruling may just be the tipping point for conservatives to take to the streets and push back against what they see as a government not aligned with the electorate.

"Grass-roots efforts aimed solely at homosexual marriage are not likely. What you will see is another effort aimed at an overgrown and overblown government," Alexander said. "We have the Supreme Court and any number of lower courts that have articulated an understanding of the law that is inconsistent with the people who are the source of all laws in the country."

And while the raging debate over gay marriage has captured the attention of the nation, the gay and lesbian community faces many other challenges, according to Larry Gross, USC professor and expert on gay and lesbian rights.

"There are many states where it is perfectly legal to fire someone or deny their housing based on sexual orientation," Gross said.

In 29 states, gays and lesbians aren't protected from workplace discrimination, according to the Human Right Campaign.

The May beating of a transgender woman in Hollywood and a recent spate of attacks in New York underscore an uptick in violence aimed at the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, said Wilson Cruz, national spokesman for Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

"Marriage was always a piece of a bigger goal and that bigger goal was to create a country and a world where LGBT people can live free of fear and violence," Cruz said. "We can look at the rash of hate crimes and know we have a long way to go. We had the highest rate of murders in our community in the last year; we still have a long way to go."

In 2012, 25 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered persons were murdered in hate crimes in the U.S., almost double the tally of documented hate-related killings of LGBT persons in 2011, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, which tracks violence aimed at gays, lesbians and transgendered persons.

Before the Supreme Court made its decision on the two laws that stood as obstacles to same-sex marriage, the political wind was to the back of the gay rights movement, Gross said.

"Young people just don't get it why they should be worried about this," Gross said. "When you expose a boogeyman as a fake monster, what is there to be afraid of?"

A Field Poll survey conducted earlier this year found that 61 percent of registered voters in California support gay marriage and 32 percent oppose same-sex unions. In 2008, only 51 percent of registered voters in California supported gay marriage.

And among 18- to 32-year-olds, support for gay marriage is at 70 percent, according to a recent Pew poll.

"The generational handwriting is on the wall," Gross said.

In California, the Supreme Court decision could be a mixed blessing for Republicans. Gay marriage could galvanize conservatives in primaries and help candidates collect cash.

"Current officeholders that have their base and supported Prop. 8., I expect them to continue to rile up their supporters by mentioning Prop 8. I think gay marriage will still be an issue for fundraising and to connect to the base," said Doug Johnson, fellow at The Rose Institute of State and Local Government, a political think tank based at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont.

State Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Hesperia, immediately cashed in on the Supreme Court decision. The Minuteman-turned-politician announced his candidacy for governor and mentioned gay marriage in his appeal to financial backers.

"If you did not hear the Supreme Court ruling yesterday, the voters of California were handed a major blow," the email from Donnelly's campaign read. "Because Jerry Brown and Kamala Harris negated their responsibilities to defend and uphold the voter outcome in the initiative process, the Supreme Court ruled that the people of California did not have standing to defend the voters choice of Prop 8."

If they continue to align themselves with gay marriage opponents, Republicans run the risk of alienating the broader electorate, some observers say.

"If Republican voters continue to focus on gay marriage and social issues, they will continue to struggle in the state," Johnson said.

"I don't think the hard right conservative wing of the Republican Party will allow their candidates to do anything but be on the losing side of these fights whether its marriage equality or being pro-choice," said Herman, a partner in the Pasadena-based Strategy Group, a political consulting firm behind President Barack Obama's 2008 election.